1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to computer systems, and more particularly to a system and method for logging and manipulating system state information.
2. Description of the Background Art
At the current stage of computer technology, occasional system and application program errors are unavoidable. There are four basic types of program errors: the informational, the warning, the fatal, and the system fatal. An informational error is caused by a benign condition, such as "printer out of paper." A warning error is caused by a correctable condition, such as a printer unexpectedly going "off-line," a failure of an application program to locate a configuration file or an abnormal termination of an application program, which if left unattended could compromise system stability. A fatal error is caused by a condition which indicates an unstable system, such as server shutdown or a corrupt system file data structure, and thus warrants system rebooting. Lastly, a system fatal error is caused by a condition which indicates a totally unusable system, such as unexpected page faults by the microkernel, failure of the primary hard drive, or abnormal termination of a critical operating system server, and thus warrants system shut down to avoid additional problems.
Conventional operating systems, such as the VMS.RTM. operating system produced by the Digital Equipment Corporation of Maynard, Mass. and the Windows NT.RTM. operating system produced by the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., are generally limited to storing in a system log a coded message representing each error. When users contact technical support for assistance, technicians can review the coded messages, but typically find the messages insufficiently descriptive for desired diagnostic purposes. Thus, technicians resort to troubleshooting. Therefore, a system and method are needed for preserving more descriptive messages in a system log and for enabling further manipulation of the messages.